Google Predicts CBRS Will Ready by Summer; Sees New Paradigm for Sharing

Google remains hopeful the 3.5 GHz band citizens broadband radio service band will open for business in the first half of 2019, said Andrew Clegg, spectrum engineering lead, at the Next Century Cities conference Tuesday. Clegg predicted sharing will remain a key theme under President Donald Trump and will hit new heights with use of the 3.5 GHz band. The CBRS band will benefit rural and urban consumers, Clegg said: “It’s going to add a lot of fill-in capacity for urban systems. It’s a great complement to 5G.” In rural markets, wireless ISPs now have access to 50 MHz in the band and will be able to use up to 150 MHz, he said.

The past three presidents have issued spectrum memorandum, starting with George W. Bush, Clegg said. “Both parties have looked at spectrum sharing as a way to improve the efficiency with which we use spectrum and also gain access to more.” Industry’s technical capabilities have improved significantly, he said. “Political interest in spectrum sharing and the development of the technical capabilities are coming together.” Earlier, the conference heard about politics and broadband (see 1901150050).

“If we make CBRS work, which it will, I guarantee you, we’re pretty deeply involved in that, it will be easy to bring spectrum sharing to other bands that are less challenging,” Clegg said. “We’re really looking forward to doing that.” Clegg sees interest in priority access licenses that will be sold at auction and the general authorized access in CBRS, including carriers. “As CBRS develops, we’ll see which one ends up being more in demand,” he said.

More than 25 million Americans lack access to “real broadband,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. CBRS will be important but even more so is the C band, directly above it, he said. The C band offers “an enormous amount of spectrum,” he said. The FCC is initially trying to clear the lowest part for licensed use, and most of the band will remain dedicated to the fixed satellite service, Calabrese said.

A law of economics is supply creates its own demand, said Bartlett Cleland, American Legislative Exchange Council general counsel. “I honestly can’t think of anything more important for the future of technology” than making more spectrum available, he said. “There are some nice juicy junks sitting out there that should be relatively easy” to open, he said. “There is no end to this.”

Wi-Fi spectrum is hugely valuable, Cleland said. Most people, including at his house, use Wi-Fi “all the time,” he said. The old junk bands used for Wi-Fi “turned out to be some of the most valuable bands out there,” he said.

Unlicensed spectrum “has proven far more resilient and to have far more capacity than anyone would ever have expected,” Calabrese said. “The same will be true with CBRS.” The traditional Wi-Fi band, 2.4 GHz, is crowded in some areas and other mid-band unlicensed spectrum is critical, he said. “It also doesn’t keep pace with 5G,” he said. “It’s 20 MHz channels, and what you need today are 80 MHz channels and even 160 MHz channels for gigabyte Wi-Fi.”

Policymakers should avoid making the wrong assumptions about spectrum, said Claude Aiken, president of the Wireless ISP Association. “We need to think long term,” he said, "in an innovation-maximizing way.”

Clegg said 5G is taking shape and how it will look down the road isn't certain. The first deployments use high-band spectrum, he noted. “What we’re seeing now is sort of the first concept of 5G playing out,” he said: “As we develop good spectrum-sharing technologies, some of those characteristics” in millimeter-wave bands “can be applied even to lower-frequency bands.”